Processed meat products such as sausage products, and certain other kinds of processed meat products are usually treated in smoke houses or ovens on a continuous basis.
Such smoke houses or ovens are simply elongated tunnel-like chambers, which may be straight, or may be arranged with several curves or bends, depending upon the layout of the plant, and are provided with overhead conveyor systems for transporting the meat products slowly through the chamber.
In the majority of cases, for the sake of convenience and flexibility the overhead conveyor system is a single rail and chain system, so that it can most easily follow a curved path.
Within the chamber various different processes may be carried out. For example, the meat products may be washed or subjected to steam treatment, they may be partially cooked, and they may be subjected to a smoke treatment or a liquid smoke i.e. a water spray incorporating a solution providing a smoke-like flavour to the products, and/or chilled.
Such chambers are provided with a loading station at the inlet end and an unloading station at the outlet end, with the meat products being loaded and unloaded more or less continuously.
In order to support the meat products on the conveyor system, a system of hanger bars is provided. Such hanger bars are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Patent Nos. 3,594,858, 3,792,508, and 3,982,300, all of which are owned by Knud Simonsen Industries Limited.
The various different forms of hangers disclosed in such Patents have proved to be highly satisfactory, and have achieved wide acceptance, and provide practical and effective solutions to many of the problems in the design of such hangers for handling a variety of meat products.
There are, however, certain limitations on their use.
For example, the meat products, usually sausages such as weiners and the like, are loaded onto the hangers more or less completely by hand, and the hangers must then be lifted by hand and placed in position.
For convenience, and in fact for practical operation, it is therefore not possible to go above a certain predetermined maximum weight that can be loaded on each hanger.
This means therefore that the size of the oven or processing chamber is also subject to certain limitations. Thus the interior width and height of the chamber are more or less dependent upon the space occupied by the meat products loaded on a single hanger. In addition, the length of any such chamber for processing will be dependent upon the type of processing being carried out and the speed of operation. Thus, a greater production from a given installation cannot be practically achieved, simply by making the installation longer. In order to do this, the speed of transporting the meat products through the oven would have to be greatly increased, which brings in numerous other problems.
However, it is clearly desirable from the viewpoint of building an economical installation, that the size of the oven or chamber should be increased so that a greater production volume of meat products can be put through it in a given time.
The cost of simply building a larger oven or chamber may be relatively minor. In many cases it will be possible to use the same control systems, and air circulating fans, pumps and the like will simply be increased in capacity, without any major increase in construction costs.
In addition, in many cases, labour costs will not increase notwithstanding the larger size and handling capacity of the chambers.
As stated, however, the major problem in designing a larger installation is the practical limits imposed at the loading or input end of the oven, where each hanger must be individually manually loaded. A normal hanger load of such meat products will only occupy a certain cross-sectional area of oven, and simply increasing the dimensions of the oven will not enable a larger hanger load to be handled manually.
Accordingly, with a view to overcoming the foregoing problems and disadvantages, the present invention comprises the provision of an oven or processing chamber having a greater cross-sectional area, and an overhead conveyor system extending therethrough, said conveyor system incorporating a plurality of movable support members or trollies, and a plurality of generally downwardly dependent carrier members extending from said conveyor system at spaced apart intervals therealong at least some of said carrier members having at least two releasable attachment means thereon vertically spaced apart from one another a predetermined distance, and there being a plurality of meat product hanger members, one said meat product hanger member being releasably attachable to a said attachment means, and each of said meat product hanger means being adapted to support a predetermined load quantity of meat products, in spaced apart relation from other meat products supported on other said meat product hanger members whereby on at least some of said carrier members, said meat products may be supported in separate load quantities, in vertically spaced apart relation from one another, thereby substantially filling the cross-sectional area of said oven chamber.
More specifically the invention comprises such carrier members, and spaced apart upper and lower attachment means thereon, with one of said attachment means being vertically offset with respect to the other of said attachment means, whereby to balance the load of meat products on a said carrier member.
The invention may further comprise a said carrier member having two attachment means, one of said attachment means being lower than the other, and located in spaced apart vertical planes, whereby meat products hanging thereon are displaced from one another.
The invention may further comprise a said carrier member having three said attachment means thereon in vertically spaced apart relation.
The invention further comprises that the meat product hanger members may be readily releasable from said carrier members, and the oven chamber will preferably incorporate automatic disengagement means for releasing as aforesaid.
It will of course be appreciated that such an oven chamber will be provided with the usual air circulation systems, and air heating and humidifying means, and steam discharge and/or water sprays, and may be provided with smoke distribution systems or liquid smoke sprays, and such systems will be provided at different zones spaced along the length of the oven whereby to provide any desired treatment for such meat products in a continuous and controllable manner.
The invention not only embraces the processing plant itself and also the new hanger system and the carriers used therein, but also provides a novel method of operating a sideloading meat processing apparatus.
The various features of novelty which characterize the invention are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and specific objects attained by its use, reference should be had to the accompanying drawings and descriptive matter in which there are illustrated and described preferred embodiments of the invention .